I was asked to talk to the students about leadership and the future. My primary point is that young journalists are already providing important leadership in our profession and they have an extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary examples to shape journalism in their careers.

I don’t have a written version of the address, but my slides are below. I sought advice for these young journalists from some outstanding successful journalists. I shared some of the advice on my slides. In other cases, I drew my advice from things these journalists had posted online (or things they said in interviews). Or I just drew my own lessons for the students from these journalists’ careers.

Here are the responses from the young journalists who sent advice to the students:

Laura Amico’s advice

Audience: I still think the best thing I ever did was to start at a small paper. Really. Small. (3 reporters and a photog.) Reason: It taught me about audience. The people I covered I ran into not only at school board meetings, but at the grocery store, at the movie theater, and at the county fair. The magic behind Homicide Watch really is the audience and working at a small paper, getting to understand what the community needed of me, and what I needed of them, helped me understand the importance of building journalism into and through the community.

Finances: You may not make much, or you may be working for free. But make a plan for paying bills. Contribute to the 401k. Stock money away in savings. Having that financial net makes it easier to move on to the next job/ opportunity/ whatever when the time is exactly right. Chris and I were able to launch HWDC ONLY because we had savings.

Passion: Find something to be passionate about every day, or at least something that you like doing. A story that you can peck away at between phone calls on the story that the editor assigned you. A source you can call and gab with and remember what you like about the beat. Your timesheet to remember that you’re getting paid. Whatever it is, find something every day. Eventually small joys will lead to larger discoveries about what you want out of your career.

Matt Thompson’s example and advice

I will tell the students that Matt was the co-creator (with Robin Sloan) of the 2004 video EPIC 2014 (hard to believe 2014 is next year):

David Cohn’s advice

It’s a small journalism world. Don’t be a jerk. Because everyone will remember. In fact, be the opposite.

Go full force. If you REALLY want to break in – dive head first. If you go halfway – you’ll only make it halfway and there is no life-raft in the middle of the swim.

Related to #2 work your butt off. At one point I counted 6 bosses. I was working all kinds of jobs – from freelance writing, to book research assistant to professional aggregator for a Digg competitor (owned by AOL) to project manager for journo projects etc etc. Of course – in the long run this many jobs is not sustainable. But if you are young and take #2 to heart – by doing a wide variety you will find out what you are truly interested in (or not interested in) and through a process of elimination you will go from doing 6 jobs part time to 1 job full time.

Never stop trying to learn more. Several organizations including IRE, Poynter and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists offer training to improve your skill sets. Seek out scholarships to these sessions. Many of these organizations provide financial help.You can ask your company to pay for the training but make sure you have a plan for how you can share with colleagues what you learned.

Learn your state’s open records laws. They can be your best friends. Here is a link to a letter generator for FOIA and for your state requests. Eventually, you will learn to craft your own but, in the meantime, this will help.

Pick someone for whom you are specifically writing a story. I write for my little brother. He is a recent college graduate, smart but not a news junkie. He cares about what happens in his community but only if you can quickly engage him.

Never be intimidated by the people you cover. Ask tough questions but don’t be arrogant. Always keep in mind that you have access on behalf of your readers.

Liz Heron’s advice

Always keep an open mind and an active curiosity about new forms of storytelling and communication. Seek out mentors, both on the cutting edge, and at the core of traditional journalism. Also, devour everything you can about new business models; journalists can’t afford to stay ignorant about the bottom line these days.

Don’t be timid about reaching out to professionals you don’t know on social media. Ask them questions about their work, engage with them about what they’re covering or building, offer them assistance and input when they ask for it. You never know when that person will be in a hiring position, or knows someone who is, and they’ll already know you.

ABT: Always be tinkering. Try out new social media services or storytelling tools when they come out, set up and design your own website, learn new coding skills via something like CodeAcademy and try them out on your own. It takes up a lot of “spare” time to do this, but it is well worth the benefit to be the one person who knows how to do something in a newsroom or a stack of resumes.

Get in some face time at meetups and events. If you have a local chapter of the Online News Association, get on their mailing list and sign up for their monthly events. The same goes for groups like Hacks/Hackers, Social Media Club, etc. If there’s something you’re into, chances are there’s a meetup for it. This is where professionals go to swap their secrets, so go meet them there.

Daniel Victor’s example and advice

Distinguish yourself. Lots of people can demonstrate basic proficiency, so you need to find something that makes you unusual. Have projects or ideas you can point to and say: No one else has tried this, or no one else can give you this.

You have to fully know the rules before you know the best way to break them. Once you’ve really ground yourself in the basics of reporting and how to work in a newsroom, you’ll have a better idea of how you can effectively “disrupt” one.

Kim Bui’s advice

Kim Bui

Kim Bui, an Iowa State graduate now working at KPCC in Southern California, shared this advice:

Find what it is about news that you love, and keep doing it. I mean this as in find the values and actions that you’re enamored with (for me it’s finding new ways to tell interesting stories). Chances are you will not stay in the same position forever. Reporters become editors or programmers or…what have you. What keeps me going is knowing firmly what I love about news and journalism and making sure all my work reflects that, no matter what the actual title is.

Be loyal to yourself, your classmates and your bosses. My friends from ISU and I still help each other out. Mentors are hard to come by in this business, so I made mentors of my peers. We keep each other going, and it’s mattered immensely to me. Over the years, I’ve added to that list of people I can call when I’m burning out or having a bad day through conferences, ONA, #wjchat, and others things. Journalism is stressful, and it can and will try to kill you with long hours, not eating enough, and tons of stress. Find people who will remind you of why you love it when you’re down and you’ll make it through. #HorizontalLoyalty.

A more practical tip: Learn how to pitch. I never learned the art of the pitch in college, I learned it on the job, but it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever learned. Learn how to pitch a project, a story, an idea, a concept. That way, if you have a dream project, you can sell your boss on it. If you end up freelancing, you can sell stories. Pitching is a completely underrated skill that is at the core of what we do: Selling people on what stories matter most.

Lessons from other young journalists

In some other cases, I cited some career lessons from my observations about some young journalists:

Nate Silvershows the importance of data analysis as a journalism skill and the importance of enterprise: finding (or creating) and mastering your own niche(s).

Brian Stelter‘s coverage of the Joplin tornado using Twitter text messages shows the importance of resourcefulness and preparation.

Yes, I do note that the advice in the last two tweets is contradictory. I explain why each of them is right in different contexts. And I explain that you will get conflicting advice throughout your career. Listen and decide which advice applies best to your situations and opportunities.

@stevebuttry Learn math. No newsroom will lay off the guy who knows math. Also: Excel is your friend.

But late in Ebert’s career, when cancer was stealing his voice and his face, Ebert became one of journalism’s best bloggers and tweeters. I’ll call on the students to follow the examples of these young journalists early in their careers and to follow Ebert’s example when they are successful and experienced and tempted to coast.